American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Janie Forsyth McKinney, 2 of 2

[Interviewer] Do you have any pictures of- of the store, before this or after this, from that time? [McKinney]I don't ha- I don't have em. Um, my parents died and I was already in California, so my sister got most of the stuff, and I don't know really where the pictures are. [Interviewer] -where she's at? We could talk to her? [McKinney] Uh, she's in Alabama now, don't suppose she would i don't even know if she knows where they are but yeah, you could ask her. Hmm? i think my brother may have a few. He's got the colored sign that was on the on the door, my da-, yeah, my dad had three restrooms he had made 'ladies' 'men' and 'colored' and for some reason that amused him to take that sign. Yea [inaudible] ready? ok that's quiet! Okay so um you gave the people water [inaudible] why Because they needed it. I could tell- I was giving these people water because I

could tell that they were in horrible straits they could hardly speak the word water and it-it- it offended me that someone would be treated that badly and i thought the least i can do is take that water that they need and that they want. Try to go back there [inaudible] what did you hear when they said water? what i heard was something [gasping] wa-wa-water "please oh god somebody bring water," that was the kind of thing i was hearing. Many voices like that. It was horrible. It was like a scene from hell. It was- it was the worst suffering i'd ever heard and I knew that I could do that. [inaudible]

?inaudible? [McKinney]: Yeah. [Interviewer]: ?inaudible? no one was paying attention, they were kind of gawking ?inaudible?. [McKinney]: You want the once it were in, that we're staging this drama, huh? [Interviewer]: Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the mob that day. Who were they, what were they doing. The people who are surrounding the bus immediately were all males and they were all white. the people who were watching were their families so it the really the action was in that crowd of men and they seemed- they seemed angry, they were loud, they were shouting things, they were obviously in a- a restive mood and they were very very angry at whoever was on that bus. [Interviewer]: Why did they- why had they brought their families [inaudible] They weren't ashamed of what they were doing. They thought it was a social service. And uh, you know,

this is how you be a man, you know, I'm taking care of you, I'm protecting my- my women and children and they- they were proud of it. Southern men can be real sentimentally, uh, protective of their women and children, inappropriately so sometimes. That's what I was counting on because I was so young I knew that i might be able to get away with it on the basis of being a child and I did. [Interviewer]: Talk about what you heard, what did they sound like? Go back there, what did the mob sound like? [McKinney]: Let's see, I don't know if they used the f word back then, but if they did it was out that day it was, you know, 'get off that bus you motherfuckers, get off there, we goin to beat you 'alive you stay in there we goin to roast you alive' you know guhhh that kind of awful rude stuff. That- that's the kind of things i was hearing from the crowd the-

the white guys rented a bus. [Interviewer]: ?inaudible? where you were, do you remember? [McKinney]: [laughs] no [Interviewer] Okay, um, if we could just- lemme ask you for the short version of the story again? You'd just gotten back from the church on Mother's Day day, saw this crowd just you know- real short version. [McKinney]: I am windy, i am really windy but i'll try not to be. [Interviewer]: Ok [Interviewer]: Okay, so ?inaudible? [McKinney]: I was twelve years old and i lived with my family in a frame house five miles outside of anniston. My dad had a grocery store beside the house named forsythe and son grocery i heard from my father and from various sources just kinda like gossip that there were some black educators 'nigger agitators' coming down from the north and that they were going to give them a surprise party. I- that alarmed me but i still didn't know what it meant so on mother's day in 1961

i heard noises outside the house and i saw a bus parked in the yard and people surrounding it and their,um, cars up and down the road or there- there was a huge mob scene outside my house. so i went to the store to get a closer look at it. i've always been maybe a little too brave, but i went to the store to get a look at it and i watched as a man raised his arm above the crowd with a crowbar, and he broke out one of the back windows of the bus. The hand went down with a crowbar and when it came back up it had some kind of device, some- some object in it that he threw into that hole and then shortly thereafter smoke started coming out of it and that and then it broke into flames and the people had to get off the bus and face that mob. [Interviewer]: When you said- describe what happened again, you described it like a scene out of hell tell that again, tell me again what happened. [McKinney]: The, the door bursts open and

people just spilled out into the yard, they- they- they were practically tripping over each other because they were so sick and they needed to get some air and i remember hearing people gasping for water. they were really raspy voices, like really raw and I heard [rasping] water please give me water oh god I need water. And that's when i said i'm going to do that i'm gonna to take them some water. So i went to the house and got a bucket of water and a stack of dixie cups and went out into the middle of the yard plopped my bucket down and started giving people water. The first woman I picked was an older woman who reminded me of Pearl who raised me and I gave her water first and washed her face and when I thought she was gonna be ok I got another cup of water and went to somebody else. One of the first people I went to was Hank Thomas and I said 'take it it's water' he thought someone was going to hit him and he

heard this voice behind and says 'take it it's water' and it was me holding the water out to him. [Interviewer]: Did you know what you were doing and did you know what the repercussions would be? you know what you know that you were now ?a traitor? ?inaudible? [McKinney]: i knew that. I wasn't subtle enough to think that they might hurt my family, that they would if they were mad at me they would come after me. but i was defiant enough that i didn't care. it was just wrong. I was truly a christian and one of my favorite passages was whatever you do to the least of my brothers you do it to me and i lived it and i really was surprised that more people didn't. My community participating in the freedom

rides as as a... nah didn't really participate i can't even claim that glory. Helping the freedom riders really causing me to be on the fringes of my culture and society from then on. I was considered to be weak-minded by the Klan, which is exactly that exactly the result i wanted, because they had to figure out what to do about me and if it was something that there was something wrong with me or i was you know a little retarded, they wouldn't have to do anything and that's the solution they landed on. But people didn't talk about it, nobody talked about it, and there was- there was a little bit of gossip in the background that i heard that there was a klan meeting one night and they were just trying to decide whether to try me as an adult or you let me off as a child who didn't know better or maybe somebody who's a little bit retarded. And one of my defenders [laughs] said 'i don't see nothing wrong what she'd done. You give a dog water.' and i believe that sentiment probably carried the day and i decided that

i probably was just touched or 'tetched' as they called it. [Interviewer]: There was a ?inaudible? ?inaudible? [inaudible] [McKinney]: oh yeah. My dad didn't talk about it ever either. And it was just like it never happened, so later on when Pearl was on her deathbed, I had traveled back from california to visit her i said pearl tell me something, what my dad never got over being mad at me about that bus- burning bus, did he? he never got over being mad that I carried water to those people.' And she said, 'no child, that's not right. Said Mr. Ritchie told me that he'd never been prouder of you then he was that day.' And it was like it just put a- a bow on my relationship with my dad, which was turbulent and

it really was pretty awful, but it really helped. and I hope she didn't just make it up. [laughs] [Interviewer]: ?inaudible? The bus driver come out and look at the tires. [McKinney]: He did. [Interviewer]: ?inaudible? Because we actually have a picture of him lookin' at the tires. [McKinney]: Well soon after the bus came and parked in my father's grocery store parking lot the door opened, the bus driver came out, and he closed it back behind and he went out to look at the tires and when he realized how flat and hopeless they were he just walked away from the bus and just left all the passengers to- to fend for themselves. He just walked away. [Interviewer]: i'm gonna - I'm gonna ask you one more thing. [McKinney]: Okay. [Interviewer] ?inaudible? Just tell me again- tell me again why

why um why the freedom rides, you know, just ticked people off so much. What was it- you know, sometimes we're doing this ?inaudible? and we step back and say 'Wait a minute' [McKinney]: What was wrong with that? I know. [Interviewer]: ?inaudible? just wanna sit on a bus ?inaudible? What was it, do you think. [McKinney]: I think the thing that made white people, the racist white people and- and, you know, pretty fa-, i'm blubbering the thing that made white people so angry about the freedom riders is that the federal government was telling them what to do. And there's one thing southerners don't like is to be told what to do, they're downright ornery like that and they felt like they were under the heel all of a big government who was forcing them to change their lives and their values and that's why the freedom riders made him so angry. I think also though

was that it was as it has a somebody who has this thing we couldn't you know any chink in it, y'know like this house of cards, if pull one card out the whole thing will fall. that's a good analogy. any a little thing you know, no break, there couldn't be no breaks in it. um uh why why sitting on the bus why drive people to try to kill somebody? That's the one the worst instance is the bottom line when they are trying why? The whole southern society was based on a hierarchy in the southern man was at the top and his family and children were his property more or less and the whole thing was built on this house of cards

where if you took one of them out the whole thing would fall, it was so weak so ancient so obsolete that it was doomed to fall at anything anything would have not knocked it over. That's why they were so afraid to have any changes in their social structure any changes? Any changes. I mean, even women the maddona/whore thing you know like women were either I told you they had sentimental attachments to their wives and children but if it was somebody else's wife or somebody else's kid they could be a sex object so they did a lot of his flip flopping stuff between love and hate and i never never did have any use for this mentality because you couldn't tell when you approached someone whether you're gonna see the good side or the bad one. Tell us more about the mood of the crowd, just those men, the mood of those men Those

men were angry and they were agitated and they were they were moving around and they were shouting things like 'you get off that bus you motherfucking niggers get off there we're goin' to roast you alive you stay on there. we're gonna kill. you gonna be sorry you was born, you gonna be sorry you came down here and try to mess up our world' they they were just shouting strange things, and it was just people sitting together on a bus but they made that much out of it that it. That it was going to destroy their culture and their society. [inaudible] Were they really going to roast em? I bet they would have. I don't doubt the those, that mob would have roasted those people if they hadn't gotten off the bus. no one would have come in and say 'hey we were just kidding, call the paramedics' they were serious. If they could cause the death of all those people on the bus they considered it something good, a social service, getting rid of the trash. They had no intention of backing off that day and I knew it, I knew it then and I know it

now. That's the reason I knew I was doing something dangerous is that I was aware of that mentality, had been for most of my life. It seems such a weird thing because you know you had Pearl, I'm sure a lot of people had their Pearls, you know they lived yknow day to day, black people around. why me and not my sister? no... I know. I mean not you but how could these people you know live in some ways as long as you stayed in your place you could live side by side. But then if something goes a little bit strange awry and everybody goes wacko. it seems it's hard to understand right now, cause people live very close together. Yep. I don't know what the question is. Fair [laugh]

Well, my dad actually built a house for Pearl to live in at oh my god I was so embarrassed when zi realize the significance of building a little white house behind the big white house for your maid to live in and he really couldn't understand why she didn't want to live in that house she lived with her brother in town and she went home every day. I knew I mean I just felt that in my heart why she didn't want to live in that diminutive little house and be something less. i knew it. he could he did not get. [inaudible]